The reason that the Republicans deliberately destroyed the balanced budget and created unprecedented government debt was precisely in hopes that at some point they could use the debt as an excuse to destroy social security, medicare, and myriads of educational and health programs. They represent rich people, and the rich don’t want to be having to bear their fair share of the national burden. What better way to get out of having to pay those pesky taxes than making sure the government doesn’t do anything for anyone but the rich.So everything unfolding in Washington was planned out in a room in 2001, and is going according to plan.

which sit for 20 minutes at layovers,are a health risk.As a heart attack survivor,I was very uncomfortable for the last 5 hours of my shift as were my passengers.I even saw 2 dinosaurs working the 57 line even though there were many rows of 2900's ready to go at Merlo.(It's very sad indeed that our management allows us to suffer even though they have the means to fix the issue)

When we are born, we are born free. As we grow older and are shepparded through public schools and out into the work force, we begin to face the realities of a centralized society – one that continually tries to collectivize people's time under a life-long bond to the State. It is as if there are fields full of gallows with fresh nooses swaying gently in the winds of time awaiting the necks of all the fresh blood entering the workforce. The heads slip in and the serpent-like noose fastens itself – for life. And once a person succumbs to the pressure, they lose their abilty to think. For who has time to think when one's life (time) is constantly being robbed by a collectivist State?

It seems like we have lost another brother in "our" union. His name was Larry (forgot last), and he started a little bit after me (3yrs), he was older (50's), he stayed a mini-runner for his designation at Tri-met. He past from cancer. He'll be missed. Since you probably have not heard anything. I'll tell you that he worked while he was sick. He worked out of Powell around the last time I seen him (on a holiday run), he had lost 30lbs since I saw him before this. I didn't get a chance to talk with him at that time. He worked the 3, 10hr. shifts.

Our Union has its Bylaws, Constitution and General Laws that governs how it is to operate. Section 21.7 “Disclosure of Union Business” of our Constitution and General Laws states “No officer or member of the L.U. shall furnish to any unauthorized person a list of the names and addresses of the membership. All business of the L.U. must be kept strictly private from persons outside of the Union, unless publication be authorized by the L.U., and persons giving out any information contrary to the L.U. shall, after proceeding in accordance with the provisions of Section 22, if found guilty, be fined, suspended or expelled.”

“There are bad streets everywhere, but the city is spending most of its money in just one place, downtown,” says David Hampsten, a member of the Portland Bureau of Transportation Budget Advisory Committee, using the common term for the planning district that encompasses the urban core.Street projects lose traction

Two seniors badly injured on MAX
However they may trump up statistics, they can't deny these: a 65-year-old man with life-threatening injuries after being hit by a train on the west side, and an 84-year-woman thuggerized by a sicko on one of the MAX system's many dangerous east side platforms. Does this stuff happen on buses, and we just don't hear about it?
Read more: http://bojack.org/#ixzz1TXF8nh3J

You'll never guess what just happened with Milwaukie MAX
All together now, kids:
It's too late to turn back now!
Public process in the Portland area is such a bad joke.
Read more: http://bojack.org/#ixzz1TXFFjacg

Too bad Trimet management doesn't inform our beloved public just what happens when MAX service goes down for one of its numerous reasons.
Trimet management PULLS BUSES OFF IN SERVICE ROUTES in order to take care of its beloved rail riders. This includes high density routes like the 57 and 76 at rush hour!
So what does that mean for bus riders? Long delays, overcrowded buses, missed appointments, reporting to work late, and other assorted misery's.

3 summers ago many of us "overpaid" Trimet employees suffered through a grueling heat wave. I became physically ill during that summer due to the disgraceful working conditions at this company. The company that is supposedly the "world leader" in transit. Well those of us that work here know the ugly truth about Trimet.

The only thing they are the world leader of is PROPAGANDA TECHNIQUES. There is a dark underside to Trimet's shiny downtown rail bonanza facade, and it was captured in this film by Dave Stubblefield, staring me of course. The funny thing is, not a thing has changed as far as equipment is concerned in the two years since this was filmed. Culture of safety? My ass!

I thought this kind of puts things in perspective. In 2010, the US government collected $898 billion in federal income tax revenues. The same year, we spent $847 billion on useless wars and national defense. That means that 94% of all federal income tax revenue is equivalent to what we spend on the Pentagon. Who out there thinks it was money well spent?

Also, just to piss you off a little bit more - defense spending is equivalent to 443% of what we collect in total corporate taxes

This is actually a piece of a comment made on another post but it describes pretty well how we are treated in the eyes of the management and how far the management goes sometimes to placate the public. Remember, complaints from the public are ALWAYS embellished.

The last conversation I had with my Chief was over a customer complaint which said basically "Driver was talking too much and not paying attention to his driving". My Chief proceeded to lecture me - a 45 year old, college educated father, ex-military member and all-around grownup - about "the need for safety while driving a bus".

Now that Trimet management has gotten hysterical about the fares, we operators need to make sure that we have handed out the correct transfers! This is not the time to put riders through additional stress because of operator errors!

Woo hoo! Fare-jumper tickets on MAX.

Tri-Met's acting all rough and tough on the legion of scofflaws who don't pay money to ride Portland's wonderful, turnstile-free rail network. Those tickets are $175 apiece!
Yes, but Tri-Met actually nets only $69 of that -- the rest goes to the state and the county. And so, to pay for the six new fare "supervisors," who probably make $100,000 a year including benefits, it would take 8,696 citations that actually get paid every year to break even. That's 24 new paid citations every day, including weekends, above what Tri-Met's already been collecting. Think that's gonna happen?
They don't have this problem on buses -- at least the ones on which the driver actually enforces the fare rules.

TriMet ridership tops 100 million mark againI love watching our ministry of propaganda doing its spinning, it's fascinating to me. And I always give credit where credit is due. This public service agency really has perfected the art of spin, my hats off to you in the propaganda department. Todays news release starts off with (you'll never guess), the HUGE WES increases! Of course if you have 100 riders and get 50 more that is a 50% increase, hurrah for WES!Of course the big disappointment is the bus service, alas, broken down, germ infested, late or never even showing up at all , that bus service will be the death of Trimet huh? (sic)

June saw a noted improvement in Operations Department attendance. The summer attendance campaign is continuing through the months of July and August.
Why is good attendance important for our organization? On the maintenance side, strong attendance means:
• Our daily maintenance needs are met. Absences prevent work from being completed as scheduled.
• By being here and performing your job at the highest level, you serve our customers who depend on our service to get to work, home, and manage their lives. You can take pride in the work you perform daily and appreciate the impact you have on the metropolitan area. The public appreciates what you do.
• When journey workers and service workers aren’t here as expected, it puts a burden on other members of the work group to get critical needs met.
• You are missed when you are not here. Your daily contribution to the overall mission is critical to our success in maintenance.
Our “In it to win it” attendance incentive is about reminding everyone of the impact of absenteeism on our daily business. By increasing our attendance we improve our service and our workplace. Thank you for your

The Transportation Safety Committee recently noted that frequent Operator injuries have occurred while Operators are stepping on or off the bus. Operators are reminded to please use caution when manuveuring the high step on an off the bus in the yard.
If you have a question or concern about this safety reminder or any safety issue, feel free to contact a Transportation Safety Committee representative at your garage:
• Center Street: Dowell Kearney, Laverne Martin
• Powell: Brian Runyan, Joyce Ray
• Merlo: Patti Pellegrin, Jan LamascusSafety is great unless you’re late.

Here in the pitiful tweet-sphere that contains the atomized remnants of USA governance, there is no such clarity. We don't know if that's spaghetti hitting a wall or the shit hitting the fan. But due to the amazing obduracy of the parties involved, the next sound you hear may just be the wall itself tumbling down, perhaps even the famous wall with the famous street attached.James Howard Kunstler

Nominations of candidates will be held on the first regular union meeting in May 2012 at 7:30pm as set forth by the Financial Secretary-Treasurer. Names of the nominated members shall be recorded at the time of nomination by the Financial Secretary-Treasurer/Recording Secretary and shall be placed on the ballot in alphabetical order. Chick here for a list of all ATU757 elected Offices.

The crisis in Greece must be seen in a global context for another reason. People in Canada, the United States, Spain, Ireland, Italy, Britain, and many other countries are being given the same message: your well-being must be sacrificed in the name of "austerity."

There is increasing resistance around the world to this latest form of class warfare.

In reality, however, transnational economic elites want an ever greater share of wealth, even if it means that poverty and inequality are increasing for the majority.

In 1940, when Mussolini demanded that Greece surrender or face invasion, the Greek response was a single word: "No" ("Oxi"). When Mussolini's troops attacked, the Greeks inflicted the first military defeat ever on the Axis powers.

While riding the subway through the Boston rush hour, I have been able to observe just how well these personal electronic mental life support units work in shielding people from the sight of their fellow-passengers, who are becoming a rougher and rougher-looking crew, with more and more people in obvious distress. By focusing all of their attentions on the tiny screen, they are also spared the sight of our well-worn and crumbling urban infrastructure.http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2011/07/dead-souls.html

This procedure outlines the primary duties, responsibilities, and expectations of every operator. More detailed information on how to complete specific duties and tasks may be found in other standard operating procedures.
If you have a problem or concern regarding work expectations, TriMet encourages you to talk with your supervisor or to use any of the following avenues to find a solution:

I have been speaking to numerous operators all of whom get confused about stopping the bus after the bus has left a stop. It really is a safety hazard to make these stops but many of us "feel badly" about leaving people behind so we stop.

Trimet management could rectify all this mess by declaring publicly a firm policy on this problem:

Trimet management has directed its operators to not pull over for passengers once the bus has departed! All complaints regarding this issue should be addressed to customer service and not the operators.

These so-called "wars" (so-called because they are not constitutional) are not "wars ON terror", but "wars OF terror", of which not all the victims are among these foreign tribes. The American people are victims, too. The Middle Eastern tribes do not hate Americans' freedoms, with which they have had no experience whatsoever; rather, they hate America's leadership class, which is bombing, shooting, and otherwise trying to kill them on a daily basis. And if Americans want to preserve their freedoms, they should begin to look closely at this situation through those tribesmen's eyes.

I am not aware of any evidence that Hitler, Stalin, or Mao ever shot some political enemy in the back of the head; but hundreds of thousands of supposed "enemies" were shot by their lackeys. "Great men" of that stamp are apparently "great" because they can convince large numbers of "little men" to behave in the most bestial ways towards even larger numbers of their completely innocent and harmless fellow men. The questions that need answers, then, are: Why do the "lesser men" follow the Hitlers, Stalins, and Maos into the labyrinth of evil? And why do the masses allow themselves to be herded, and even slaughtered, by these thugs as so many sheep?THE DAILY BELL

The DGB confederation of trade unions argues that a short, lunchtime power nap makes sense for health and performance reasons. "Even though the siesta is something that isn't a given anymore in the southern European countries, it is still a good idea for health reasons," said Annelie Buntenbach, a DGB executive board member. "A short afternoon nap reduces the risk of, for example, a heart attack, and provides an energy boost," she told Tageszeitung in an interview.Studies bear this out. Researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health and the University of Athens Medical School in Greece found that Greek workers who took regular siestas had 37% lower mortality rates from coronary illnesses than their napless counterparts.The idea has caught on in Germany, where big German companies such as BASF, Opel, Hornsbach and Lufthansa provide special rooms for their workers, and employers say they benefit from the increased productivity of well-rested employees.http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jul/17/german-unions-lunchtime-siestas-naps

“Over the course of the two-year contract, people will not go backward,” SEIU Executive Director Heather Conroy said. “In fact, they’ll go forward.”
Under the tentative agreement, SEIU-represented workers would begin paying 5 percent of the cost of their health insurance premiums in 2012, the same as workers represented by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 75.
But SEIU negotiated a richer health care subsidy to help lower-paid workers cover the cost of their premium share.
The state will provide SEIU-represented workers a monthly $40 subsidy for people making less than $2,816 a month, SEIU spokesman Ed Hershey said.Full story here!

But HRT and other transit officials that operate light rail say there's little that can be done to control how people act around the trains. A 2009 Federal Transit Administration report shows that more than 90 percent of fatalities and injuries in light-rail collisions over the previous five years were caused by "public behavior.""There's a wide range of bad habits out there, egregious bad habits," Price observed after a few weeks of test runs through downtown. "Something happens pretty much every day."Norfolk light rail's start-up could start up rash of accidents | HamptonRoads.com | PilotOnline.com

Saturday, July 23, 2011

by Dave Lister

You have to question the motives of the city of Portland, Multnomah County, Metro and TriMet when they seem to spend as much effort fueling their public relations machinery to promote their agendas and convince us they are doing a great job as they do in doing their jobs in the first place.
It’s a constant barrage of direct mail, emails and PR-flack radio interviews exhorting us to drive less and save more, or walk and bike the neighborhood, or jump on transit. Even during the wettest spring and early summer in recent memory, with the Columbia River dams’ spillways opened to maximum capacity, the radio jingles urging us to conserve water are already in full swing. And every dime spent to persuade us to behave one way or another is a dime not being spent on the services we require.